The Galician Parliament consists of a single house, composed of 75 members
directly elected by universal adult suffrage for a four-year term of office.
Each one of Galicia's four provinces - A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense (Orense)
and Pontevedra - is a constituency entitled to an initial minimum of ten
seats; the remaining 35 seats are distributed among the four provinces in
proportion to their population.

In the election held in 2016, parliamentary seats were allocated in the following
manner:

Province

Seats

A Coruña

25

Lugo

14

Ourense (Orense)

14

Pontevedra

22

Total

75

Otherwise, the Galician electoral system is almost identical to the system
used to choose members of the Spanish Congress of Deputies.
As such, parties, federations, coalitions and agrupaciones de electores
(electors' groups) present closed lists of candidates; electors then cast
a ballot for a single list; and seats in each constituency are apportioned
according to the largest average method of proportional representation (PR)
- the d'Hondt rule - among lists receiving at least five percent of all valid
votes cast in the constituency (three percent before 1993), including blank
ballots.

It should be pointed out that the Galician electoral system favors the sparsely
populated provinces of Lugo and Ourense at the expense of A Coruña
and Pontevedra. For example, in the 2005 parliamentary election, the smallest
quotient used to allocate seats was 14,456 votes in Lugo, but in A Coruña
the same figure rose to 26,025 votes. It should noted as well that the five
percent barrier is relevant only in A Coruña and Pontevedra: in Lugo
and Ourense, the d'Hondt rule creates a de facto representation threshold
which is slightly larger than the barrier set forth by law.

The Popular Party (PP) - Spain's major right-of-center party, originally
known as the Popular Alliance (AP) - has been Galicia's dominant political
force since 1981, when it scored an upset victory over the Union of the
Democratic Center (UCD), the moderate party that ruled Spain from 1977 to
1982. PP, which has won the largest number of seats in every election to
the Parliament of Galicia, ruled the autonomous community from 1982 until
1987 (when a no-confidence motion brought down the minority government of
Xerardo Fernández Albor), from 1990 to 2005 (when AP founder Manuel
Fraga Iribarne headed the autonomous government), and again since 2009, under
the leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijoo.

The Galician party system has been characterized as well by the presence
of nationalist parties that compete with Spain's major statewide parties,
although Galician nationalists have never enjoyed an electoral following
as broad as that of their counterparts in
Catalonia and the
Basque Country. Nonetheless, since 1993
the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) has captured a substantial number of
votes and seats in elections to the Galician Parliament, and the left-wing
nationalist coalition has alternated in second place with the Party of Galician
Socialists (PSdeG), the Galician branch of PSOE.

While PSdeG has never won a parliamentary election in Galicia, the party
has held power on two occasions: from 1987 to 1990, when then-Socialist leader
Fernando González Laxe ruled in alliance with the Galician Coalition
(CG; a moderate nationalist party established by former Galician UCD leaders
after the centrist party's dissolution in 1983), the Galician Nationalist
Party (PNG; a CG breakaway) and AP dissidents; and from 2005 to 2009, when
PSdeG leader Emilio Pérez Touriño formed a coalition government
with BNG, after PP lost by a single seat the absolute majority it held in
the Galician Parliament since 1989 (which the latter recovered in 2009, once
again by a one-seat margin).